Higher Poynton

Evidence of the £250 shopping expedition on Monday

One of the milestones on the Maccie - gave me a shock at first as they look like gravestones!

The former station platforms at Poynton

After I posted on Tuesday we went for a walk – headed back down the towpath to near Bridge 16 and then followed the path over to Middlewood Way. It is a 10 mile path that runs on a former railway bed that serviced coal mines in this area. It was a lovely walk and I was pleased I wore my boots as bits of the access to it were muddy, and also because I avoided the plight David had over getting small stones in his shoes and having to empty them out while keeping more from getting on the unshod foot … The path is well used – cyclists, walkers, dog walkers, horses – the latter two left signs even a blind detective could follow! At the time we were there it looked as though people use it to commute by cycle. The path goes from Macclesfield up to Middlewood and was opened as a path by David Bellamy in 1985 if I remember rightly from the plaque at the old Poynton Station platform. A picnic area has been constructed between the two platforms there and access paths lead down/up to/from the road. We used another path heading back in the direction of the canal – I got David to check on the ipad that we were on a path and not someone’s driveway! We came out at Bridge 14 north of the CRT Long Term moorings on the onside and Victoria Pit moorings on the offside. It looked idyllic there in the late afternoon sun.

Back at the boat, I showered and we had a drink onboard (chardonnay, pear cider, no prizes for correctly assigning ownership), and then we walked down into the village to The Boar’s Head – wonderful home cooked food: I had braised steak and onions in a red wine gravy and David had steak and kidney pie. No room for desserts although the choices were tempting. When we got back I had a call from our dear friend Lesley (the woman who was such a mean boss when I worked [slaved] for her at the Home Office back in 2006). I stood chatting to her (lecturing more like… she needed a good talking to!**) while I was overlooking the playing fields beside the moorings. Apparently they used to be at the level of the canal, but have subsided with all the mine workings below. When I was told this yesterday at The Trading Post (nice man who sorted out our pumpout hassles) I said I hoped that kids wouldn’t fall through if they jumped up and down in one spot. He wasn’t so sure that would be a bad thing for some of them who come into his shop.

** Lesley has had the cheek to talk to a potential conservatory builder without my being present. It is a cheek because it was my sister Dee and I who first suggested a conservatory to Lesley, we drew up the design and planned the garden. And now she is talking about getting a boring square conservatory built! You can tell she worked at the Home Office – all her imagination has been pummelled out of her. Seriously tho, the planning permission rules here are quite different from in NZ. At home, any structure that alters the footprint of the house has to have a permit. Here people can add a conservatory of up to a certain size and made of certain materials without planning permission. Hence the plethora of samey samey conservatories all over the place. Lesley has been given strict instructions to work out what she wants it to look like, what doors, windows, roofing she wants, (to be signed off by me) and then apply for planning permission if that’s what’s required. None of this restricting herself. She HAS been told!

Today (ie Wednesday as this was written then) we are moving up to Marple and will moor up to meet our 2 sets of friends coming to stay. Barry and Pauline are arriving by car,  Mel and Pete by train. We are looking forward very much to seeing them all. Both couples are yachties so will be able to steer the boat and give me a break. More than that though, we are always happy having friends on board. YAY!!! I have even worked out where the luggage can go (B&P are coming up from London and always travel light, but M&P are visiting us on a European trip so will have more than a backpack each).

Higher Poynton - CRT long term moorings on left, Victoria Pit moorings on right.

The alternative alternator is the business

I emailed a friend back in NZ yesterday evening and here is what I wrote to him: ‘I should be preparing dinner here, but I am had it. Did a big grocery shop this morning before taking the rental car back. Spent £250 - we do have 4 people coming on Wednesday to stay (2 for 2 nights and 2 for 4) so lots of booze, bedding, meat, and various supplies for longer term. The shopping took over an hour and the trolley was chocka and therefore very hard to push/pull or slide sideways! By the time I'd filled the trolley, emptied it on to the conveyor belt, packed it in the trolley again, emptied the trolley into the car boot, emptied the car boot into the boat, I was had it. But then we set off to cruise up to moor up opposite Lyme View Marina to get a new smaller alternator fitted by Ed Shiers, the mobile engineer. Since we arrived, while Ed did his magic, I've re-organised all the food cupboards, the fridge and the freezer, stored most of the groceries (David had put the booze away and unpacked the bedding), and I’ve made a chilli con carne for one of the guest dinners. I am starting on the chardonnay soon! I think a few cheese and crackers and I'll be sorted for an evening meal.’

After emailing Gregor, I modified my dinner ideas and had fresh pineapple alongside a gu pudding – people, if you haven’t tried them, do! They are yummy. And the bonus is that if you eat lots of them you build up a set of little glass ramekins that can be used in the oven. Now what could be better? Yummy puddings and ramekins! Just so you don’t think he went hungry, I will tell you that David used up the last of the frozen thai green chicken curry that was too hot for me.

This morning we moved off to Higher Poynton to get a pumpout. Had planned on getting it done across from where we moored last night, but when we pulled up there there was no hose for cleaning it out and the diesel pump had a notice saying cash or cheque only. We do have a cheque book, but the lack of cleaning hose put us off. Obviously they use canal water to clean it out. I guess that is reasonably common, but it seems weird to us.

We were delighted as we moved on – the engine sounds wonderful now: there is no shuddering or vibrations, and in neutral and tickover the engine just purrs instead of rattling. I can go along in tickover which is now as slow as it should be instead of fast and noisy. So in our book, Ed Shiers is a genius. He is helpful, responsive, willingly works after hours, tells you what he is doing and why. And what he does works – that’s the main thing, of course! He is Four Counties Marine Services – if you need him, look him up on his website. The testimonials are great to see and we agree with them wholeheartedly. He travels quite widely – all he needs is for you to moor close to a road so he can park nearby.

We’ve had the pumpout – not without hassles as the onboard pump seemed to have something stuck in its valve (it is in line, so even with a commercial pump out, everything goes past it). Andy from the Trading Post, at Higher Poynton, helped sort it out and wouldn’t take any additional fees for his time. A good kind trader, and we are delighted to find him.

While that was being sorted, we met a family (Jackie, Simon, Matthew and Theo) who are having a 3 day trip on nb The Wandering Duck, which is a narrowboat backpackers (as opposed to a hotel boat). It is run by a couple who spent a year running a backpackers’ hostel in NZ and have replicated it on a smaller scale on a narrowboat. Excellent idea!

I moved the boat back for the water (it is so easy to move it at low speed now, that I could do it by myself without David there to take ropes etc) and while David went in for a shower, I met a lovely lady called Linda who is dead keen to come to NZ for a holiday but her husband did lots of travelling for work and now doesn’t want to travel. I suggested she come over with a friend and leave him at home – without filling the freezer for him. She said he’d just go to the pub – no worries, I said, that’s what you’ll be doing too! I think a seed has been sown so I won’t be surprised to hear from her re coming to stay at Cherswud, whether we are B&Bing or not. Here’s hoping!

After the water fill up, we moved backwards through the bridge (another easy move, thanks, Ed!) to the visitor moorings and have tied up for the day. I know, it’s a b*gger, isn’t it, finishing up by lunchtime? When I have posted this we will go out for a walk. We have seen several groups of walkers (ramblers they are called in the UK) come past us here so there must be good public paths available to explore. I can’t see any hills (am keeping my eyes firmly downwards) so we won’t need to repeat the White Nancy- and Mow Cop-type treks!

Am feeling very pleased at the moment – getting the alternator replaced and the resultant change in engine performance, and then resolving the pump out hassle has a sense of victory about it. We are, fingers/toes/eyes crossed and touching wood, gradually sorting out hassles and understanding the boat better. It feels good. I do hope putting that feeling in writing isn't tempting fate ...

Those locks for the second time and a visit from B&B friends - this post should be before the one it's after ...

Beautifully rural

Olek is using up energy, running alongside the boat, being a mobile tree

A static tree

He's a winner

Jon helping with closing the gates

Lunch with Jon and Sybil at the bottom of the locks - chicken soup, home made bread followed by fruit salad and cream

Best buddies and both gorgeous

Well, Kirsty and Tim, at least Olek likes Mel!

Photos from the last few days

He'd already traversed this hill 3 times and David and I did it once. I just kept walking (stopping would have been fatal) and David took photos

Keep climbing, Marilyn, nearly there!

Sunset from our mooring by Bridge 85

The full moon looked lovely

Next day at the beginning of the Bosley Locks - 3rd time!

How can he be tired? He's just started!

Walking and wandering along the Maccie

We are now back in the outskirts of Macclesfield beside Gurnett. We had a surprisingly peaceful night given we are about 50 metres from a pub. Yesterday was lovely till it stopped being so when we arrived here to moor. But more of that later.

Since the previous post (which only got us as far as Bollington on Monday) we have had a big walk up the Mow Cop – the highest hill around these parts. I think the Northern Walkway in Wellington would give it a run for its money, but even so for two unfit oldies it required a number of stops for breathing regulation. Of course the 9 year old scampered in his usual way … It was a lovely walk through woods, across a meadow (already quite high up), through more woods (muddy) and then through the paddock with young cattle in (very curious but I thought if I ignored them they might turn away before approaching too close). There was no escape route if all went tits up (me, not them as they didn’t have any) as in the next paddock (only approachable over barbed wire above a stone fence) were the BULLS. Anyway, safely through we went up a narrow path and found farm houses, then a village at the top of the hill – the latter was a big surprise as, on our way up, it felt like we were ascending far away from people.

The Old Man of Mow - very imposing and right next to a house!

The big stone called the Old Man of Mow does look like a man – head and shoulders - from some angles; from others it looks like Sam the American Eagle from the Muppets. Imposing though. We wended our way up past farm houses and out on to the village road and asked a chap how to get to the remains of the castle. Immediately we were on the path, we felt again as though we were miles away from civilisation. The juxtaposition shouldn’t surprise me really, as it’s quite common over here, given the population and the age of settlements over centuries. It was extremely windy up on the top (worse than Stout St) and howlingly atmospheric with stunning views out over the countryside in all directions (Cheshire Plain, Wales, and off to the east as well).

The fake castle remains

Balancing in the wind

If we'd known it was a fake we wouldn't have done it ... You can see I am struggling

The castle is an imitation ruin, built in 1754 by a local squire (well, it’s a sure bet he didn’t do it, but a number of his lowly paid labourers quarried the rock at its base, made it into cubes and struggled up to the top of the hill to construct it.) It is imposing and would have made a good redoubt site – impregnable, and particularly good views of where your enemy would be approaching from. Although on second thoughts it would be a helluva climb with the pots of boiling oil!  Apparently it has now become a holy mountain for the Primitive Methodists whose religion was started there back in 1807 by Hugh Bourne, born of a desire for a simpler religion – why not just have no religion, I ask, cut out the middle man, act in a good and kind manner because it’s the right thing to do rather than because you’ll be punished after death if you don’t?

Since then we have been back down to the beginning of the Maccie and turned at the junction with the Trent & Mersey – I made a pig’s ear of it, so thankfully no one was watching …. We moored up (the pig now has a matching set of ears – I seem to have lost the knack of coming gently alongside the towpath and gliding to a stop) not far from there and walked into Kidsgrove to the Tesco’s for a chardonnay, food and soccer ball shop. Strangely enough they had an English soccer ball going cheap … It was good to have an extra carrier in Olek for the groceries, but as this time there were bottles of elderflower cordial (2), chardonnay (2) rose (1), the shopping was particularly heavy. It was probably just as well that we couldn’t find Rose’s Lime cordial! From there we did a short cruise up to just past the stop lock at Hall Green, moored up (better this time, so there is a partly deaf pig somewhere about) at the first mooring past the water point and walked up to have lunch at The Bleeding Wolf pub. Very nice food, and they had angostura bitters which made David’s day as his favourite tipple (alcoholic or non, is lemon, lime and bitters). Back to the boat, fill with water and moved back to the nice moorings near Bridge 86 – the pig is definitely deaf – this time we moored without too much hassle). There was an empty paddock right next to us so Olek and I played kicks with the new ball between thistles and dock. He scampered about and I moved carefully – the ground was full of cattle’s hoof holes. I am not sure how he didn’t twist an ankle but I guess he lands so lightly he doesn’t even dent the surface. I, on the other hand (foot) …

We had a BBQ dinner – we had bought the BBQ and charcoal for when Olek was with us so we had to use it, didn’t we? Prepared the charcoal, and cooked 6 sausages in the time it takes to prepare a dinner party for several people, and sat out on the towpath in the lovely evening sun, drinking rose and, for Olek, lime-ade made by Grammy (juice of 1 lime, half a lemon, 1.5 tsp of sugar stirred in vigorously, top up with water). I got good at making the lime-ade because I had to do it twice – Olek had placed his glass in the place provided in his chair’s armrest and David then folded up and moved said chair …

Yesterday we came back up through Bosley Locks. They are the only locks Olek has done on this trip, but he has now done them three times, so he declared they were his favourite and least favourite, hardest and easiest, … You get the picture. It was a fun game of opposites but I guess you had to be there. Another game we have played on the move is Hangman. He and David had played SpongeBob Squarepants Hangman and I had told Olek that 3 letter words were hardest to guess. He has learned well. But then I am quite tricky too – not for nothing did I play Hangman with classes of 7 year olds back in the 70s. I didn’t realise though that I was in training for being a grandparent!

We moored with great difficulty – not the pig’s ear problem this time – at Gurnett Aqueduct. There are 48 hour moorings here and room for x number of boats. However, yesterday there was room for x – 3 boats. This occurs because inconsiderate boaters want a space between them and the boats in front and behind. Accordingly they leave half a boat length when they moor up, so when the next person arrives and moors they think ‘ooh, better not moor up close to these people’, and they leave half a boat length. And so it goes on. As the moorings fill, people do share rings, but the early arrivals don’t move, so space runs out. We ended up very stressed, tied up (on a curve) very precariously as there were only 2 rings available, no Armco to use the chains on and hard hard ground so no possibility of using pins – David tried hard. In the end we tied the bow and centre rope to one ring between the two and the stern rope to the ring shared with the boat behind. It took us about an hour, much cursing and swearing and moving the boat back and forth trying to work out the best part of the boat to have sticking out from the curve. The first effort took 5 ropes (yes 5) and I wasn’t happy; so we moved back to have the bow sticking out. That involved the aforementioned 3 ropes and left another space for a boat in front which did get used later. We were so stressed that when we went off to find a playing field to make good use of the soccer ball, we left the tiller handle on, the ignition key in … What muppets!

(Sunday morning) We have left the boat at the Macclesfield Canal Centre, and driven Olek home to Scotland. We’ve overnighted with the kids (lovely roast beef dinner courtesy of Tim and equally lovely home made old-fashioned cherry pie and cream courtesy of Marta), and today we will drive to Stalybridge for Sybil’s 70^th birthday party, which we understand will have various entertainments. Then we’ll head back to the boat. Tomorrow we have to move the boat to somewhere convenient for Ed to work his magic with a new and smaller alternator. When we have found that place, I think we are both going to wait in the blobbing position!

Rollercoaster again but with a less traumatic ride

We arrived in Macclesfield –the town doesn’t show a very pleasant aspect from the canal unfortunately – and stopped with some drama to get water at the CRT site on the off-side (non towpath side) in front of two CRT workboats breasted up and behind two small boats tied up to a jetty at the Macclesfield Canal Centre boatyard. Parallel parking a 62 ft narrowboat is not easy at times, and is always worse with an audience! We filled with water and contemplated getting diesel at the boatyard. A chat with one of the audience on the boat I’d had to avoid (thankfully I did as his boat looks like it’s steel but is fibreglass – I think he did extremely well to remain seated in a calm-looking position while I was floundering with 17 tonnes of steel close by) identified that the boatyard closed at 4pm on a Sunday, so the man went off to ask the owner if he’d serve us even though it was coming up to 4pm then. Yes, was the reply, and please reverse in. (Have you seen the myriad of boats moored up at all angles leaving about a boat and a half’s width to get through backwards with no steering? AAARRRGGGHHH!!! It was accomplished successfully though to my surprise. We filled with diesel, checked out the location of a park for rugby ball kicking, and the rain came pounding down just as we were untying. A quick check and we could moor on the boatyard’s visitor mooring. Yay! That meant only getting slightly wetter than a drowned rat.

Later the sun came out and we contemplated moving on, but only for about 10 seconds. David and Olek set off to the park with the rugby ball for a couple of hours and I made dinner and blobbed, I think – can’t remember back that far. 

We had arranged that on Monday morning Kev (boatyard owner) would fit the front button and replace our back button which was exceedingly scruffy and sort out the airhorn which peeped rather than paaaarped. While he did that David and Olek set off to the Leisure Centre for a swim. I watched Kev and a mate (Robin I think) fit the buttons – they made it look so easy with the use of the boathook for keeping control of said buttons (why didn’t we think of that!?) Kev still had to do the contortionist act, but even though he is substantially taller and bigger than David he never looked in danger of falling in somehow. The airhorn was stripped down to its component parts (a new discovery for me that the pump for it is in the same compartment as the shower and poo tank pumpout electrics in the bathroom). The pump worked fine apart from a bit of dust, the pipe was cleared of its own dust, so it was the horn that was faulty. They adjusted that progressively, and at one point a man sitting on a seat across the cut blew his nose and he made more noise than the airhorn! (Another reason Dad should still be around: Mum always said he did the Trumpet Voluntary when blowing his nose!) In the end, after a series of minute adjustments and tests, the horn worked – but it sounds like a strangled goose. It is so effective that when I tooted it a couple of days ago to get David’s attention, using our standard two toots signal, he ignored it repeatedly … 

We set off on the boys’ return from the pool – disappointing swimming as only the learner pool was available, the large deep pool was full of lane swimmers – and headed onwards aiming for Marple. However we only got as far as Bollington - the engine was sounding sluggish with the alternator switched on and progress was slow. Going through bridge holes was like chugging through sludge. At one, the engine did its previous trick of running out of propulsion. Damn and blast, much gnashing of teeth and phone calls to the mothership (aka Aqua Narrowboats) ensued. 

Long story short (just for a change, team!) - we turned off the alternator, chugged on slowly to Bollington, moored up and waited the arrival in the evening of Ed, the engineer from Four Counties Boat Services, recommended to us by Justin from Aqua. He arrived at 7.10pm, left at 9.10pm and only wanted to charge for 1 hour's labour! I don't think so, mate! His advice was:

• we should revert to a standard alternator in the standard (in place) mounting as the current one is too big, 
• the vibrations are loosening the engine mounting bolts (3rd time they've been tightened since we've been onboard)
• the Maccie is very shallow and our draft is quite deep, so we can only go at tickover up this canal and through bridgeholes we should flick back to neutral as they are the shallowest part.

We had planned on going back to Aqua but that isn't required as Ed has made space for us in his work schedule early next week, so we are hovering around on the Maccie.

Olek and I walked up to the White Nancy memorial on a hill outside Bollington on Monday. Correction: Olek ran, bounced, jumped, skipped, walked, and I staggered and stopped often and breathed very heavily. We got there though and the effort was well worth it. The views were amazing and my photos won't do them justice. We could see Manchester in the distance and we watched planes landing and taking off at Manchester airport - well, they were so far away we couldn't see them actually landing and taking off but we could see the approaches and lift off from a few hundred feet.

Bosley Locks

We cruised onwards to the bottom of Bosley Locks – we had thought we’d get up them on Saturday but as you cannot moor halfway up the flight of 12, it would be better to go up early in the morning when we were fresh. So we moored up just past the Dane Aqueduct at the bottom of the flight. It is an extraordinarily beautiful spot with views off to both sides of the river valley and the countryside. Very peaceful even though the trains could be seen and heard on the viaduct about a mile away. Olek instigated a competition to throw stones from the aqueduct down into the river – we were all winners: even I could get them there with my girlie throwing! We also did a bit of exploring trying to find the way down to the river valley and, in the other direction, up on to a dismantled railway embankment (the railway was dismantled, but not the embankment …). No go on both counts, shame.

We decided on an early start on Sunday to be the first up the locks (NZers are not good at queuing), so by 7am be were on our way. All went well at first, with Olek getting the hang of lockwheeling very quickly (the previous afternoon he and I had helped a couple down the last few locks [when we got bored looking for the way on to the embankment], so he was already primed). It all fell apart though when we got part way up the flight and David came back to tell me the next pound was almost empty with the mud flats showing. He had to send a lot of water down through the lock from the pound above before I could get through – and I still got stuck three times! Fortunately I knew enough to be going extremely slowly and not to try to push through what was making me run aground – the technique of reversing off the obstruction works well as long as you haven’t rammed on to it in the first place!

So what was meant to be a quick trip up the locks was quite slow as the pound above then had to be topped up using the same method. After that though it was plain sailing. At the top we decided to try out the self pumpout facilities – there’s a pump on board Waka Huia and all the accroutements required. It wasn’t a hard process and reasonably clean considering what we were pumping out of the black water tank … The hardest part though was cleaning up the pipe before putting it away. It needs to be flushed through and our onboard pump doesn’t seem to have the oomph required when it gets close to the end of the pumpout (i.e. when we’re flushing it through with clean water). So we had to flush it using the hose into the Elsan sink – quite difficult to get the end of it high enough to make use of gravity to flush it! At the end of the experience David The Profligate wanted to throw it in the bin but we kept it and will use it in emergencies. One thing we do need to buy is a CRT card so we can use their pumpout machines as we come across them.

 

Ready for action - 12 locks to empty and fill, open and close

Chief coach,  pound filler and pumpout operator

Winding up the paddles - David has the next lock gates open so Olek is on his own

David coming back to help, but no need really as Olek has it sussed although some of the winding gear is very stiff

The CRT services/facilities building at the top of the locks - showers, toilets, laundry, and pump out

My view 12 times that day. See the wine bottle holder? Mostly not used as I sit on the ledge beside it so I can see over the top of the boat.